Classics of Fantasy

[mmadsen]

The Hobbit: No Comment.

No comment?

Tales of Averoigne: Ashton Smith is really... disturbed. Averoigne is good, and it's not even his best stuff - that would be Zothique. Really macabre and creepy. And some of his stuff is a huge influence on D&D, and www.eldritchdark.com is a fantastic website. Outclassed both Howard and Lovecraft.

Strong statement! I've been meaning to read my Clark Ashton Smith compilation (The Emperor of Dreams); I may have to move it up in the queue.

A Wizard of Earthsea: It was a long time ago. I didn't think it was that great them, but I was young. I remeber some of the tomb stuff being cool and the magic system is interesting.

Yeah, it didn't leave much of an imprint on me either.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: There's not really much you can say about Lovecraft. Weird stuff.

For all I know, I have read this... As much as I enjoy Dunsany's work, Lovecraft's pastiches do nothing for me.

Collected Ghost Stories: Very finely crafted and understated horror. I while ago I spent a lot of time reading classic victorian ghost stories, and along with JS LeFanu, this is the best. The ghosts themselves are very well thought out and effectively used.

I enjoyed the one M.R. James story I read, so I should pick up a compilation.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: Just bought. I'll let you know which are the good stories when I've found them.

I may go back and read some of the "good" ones m'self.

It's interesting to note who hasn't been done: Peake, TH White, Howard, Moorcock... It'll be interesting to see what he says.

It is interesting. He has mentioned most of the biggies, but they haven't received their own essays (yet).

 

[CCamfield]

The Hobbit - An absolute classic and wonderful book. My dad read it to me over successive nights as a bedtime story.
The Books of Wonder - Haven't read it, but I've read several other books by Dunsany which were very good
Watership Down - I wonder if I don't think it's a bit overrated, but still very good
A Wizard of Earthsea - Yep, definite classic. Notable for its non-European setup, its well-defined magic, and mature theme of dealing with the consequences of one's actions.
The Worm Ouroboros - Lots of fun. I wouldn't have called it like the Iliad, but great baroque fantasy fun.
Bridge of Birds - Brilliant. Funny, moving, exciting...
Silverlock - I have read this. This past year. I thought it was complete and utter dreck. Seriously. The main character remains an absolute twit even after he's repeatedly been shown when he's been wrong.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser - Read them all back in high school and some since, Ye Classic Swords & Sorcery...
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld - I haven't read this since high school, but McKillip is an excellent author and I am sure this is a very good (IIRC) young adult fantasy.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Hey, thanks for starting this thread, mmadsen. I wasn't aware that Rateliff had reviewed so many fantasy classics. I find his reviewing style a bit convoluted, but he gets the point across: these are great books, worth reading.

As to what I've read:

The Hobbit - of course. Like CCamfield, my father read it to me when I was little. He then continued by reading the entire Lord of the Rings to me as well! It took about a year all told.

Watership Down - my childhood friend Jamie had to beg me over and over to read this. "I don't know," I said; "It's about rabbits." But as Rateliff points out, it's really about so much more than that. I was immediately spellbound and drawn into the story, and melancholy when it came to an end.

The Face in the Frost - this book scared the daylights out of my when I was younger. In my mind I always think of it in conjunction with Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series (which I hope Rateliff reviews at some point), probably because I read them around the same time. Too bad Face in the Frost is out of print now; I would like to re-read it.

A Wizard of Earthsea - I agree with Rateliff that this is one of the very best fantasy sagas of our time. Like everyone else, I wanted to be Ged, desperately and forcefully as only a child can wish for something impossible. (I was not aware that Le Guin had retro-engineered her world to make it politically correct; how awful.)

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - Weirdly, I read this book surreptitiously while attending Sunday school. I'm sure that's some sort of sin. Anyway, I disagree with Rateliff that it is Lovecraft's best work; although it may be HPL's most well-realized work, it is, as others have pointed out, a Dunsany pastiche. I also am astounded that Rateliff doesn't find any of HPL's horror tales truly horrific. Surely I am not the only one to get shivers down my spine from stories like The Colour out of Space or The Shadow out of Time.

= = =

Rateliff mentions, in his review of Face in the Frost, the list of recommended reading at the back of the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide. That list set me on the path of reading fantasy classics - although I can see from the shortness of my list above that I left much undone! I commend Gary Gygax for his good taste in including that list. Hooray for D&D.

 

[Wombat]

Okay, going down the list...

Hobberdy Dick -- never even heard of it...
The Hobbit -- a lovely book, not as good as LotR, of course, but still fun
The Books of Wonder -- It's Dunsany. It's good
Tales of Averoigne -- Smith is very atmospheric, Old School Gothic (a la Byron and Radcliffe) mixed with post-WWI sickness. Disturbing in some ways, but a lovely read.
The Book of Three Dragons -- never read
Watership Down -- may all the powers preserve me from reading anything by Adams again; both this and Shardik bored me beyond tears.
The Night Land -- never read
The Face in the Frost -- never even heard of it
A Wizard of Earthsea -- one of the quintessential works of fantasy fiction, a lovely meditation on the difference between the ability to do a thing and when should actually act, beautifully written, a world that I would love to turn into a game, I cannot say enough for this whole series
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath -- probably my favourite Lovecraft work, obviously his nod to Dunsany. Weird, wild, and very, very good.
The Worm Ouroboros -- Another pre-Tolkein bit, it is strange, at times stilted, and very atmospheric; this is the grandfather of Tanith Lee's writing
Bridge of Birds -- I am a rare soul, in that I loathed this book. Didn't bother with the sequels.
A Voyage to Arcturus -- Never even heard of it
Silverlock -- tried to read it when it came out in paper, never finished it, thought of going back to it many times but kept putting other books ahead of it
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser -- fun stuff! I love these two! They don't always win, but they rarely are down long enough to really hurt. It's all about Issek of the Jug!
Collected Ghost Stories -- Mixed bag (as with all collections of short stories), but generall quite excellent
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld -- Never cared for McKillip either...
The Well at the World's End -- This is very Old School, in that Morris was essentially trying to bring back the Middle Ages into Victorian England. An interesting read, but very stilted by modern standards.

As with all "Best" lists, I have my agreements and my disagreements, but overall, I'd say this is a decent overview grouping.

 

[WayneLigon]

I had no idea this column existed, and I cannot praise it enough after reading only half the articles. It's the perfect thing to have on the site, and provides a grand introduction to the fantasy fiction that D&D is based on.

I hear more and more younger players just say 'no' when I ask 'have you ever read such-and-such?', so this kind of column I consider extremely important to thhe hobby.

 

[mmadsen]

Hey, thanks for starting this thread, mmadsen.

You're very welcome, Joshua!

I wasn't aware that Rateliff had reviewed so many fantasy classics. I find his reviewing style a bit convoluted, but he gets the point across: these are great books, worth reading.

I find it astonishing that an EN World regular with an interest in classic fantasy (me, but that describes all of us on this thread) would have to stumble across Rateliff's reviews.

Too bad Face in the Frost is out of print now; I would like to re-read it.

Out of print? You can order it from Amazon.

Rateliff mentions, in his review of Face in the Frost, the list of recommended reading at the back of the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide. That list set me on the path of reading fantasy classics - although I can see from the shortness of my list above that I left much undone! I commend Gary Gygax for his good taste in including that list. Hooray for D&D.

As a kid, I never noticed that appendix. Sigh. I did, of course, find the sections in Deities & Demigods describing Elric, Fafhrd, etc. though. Incidentally, that did not lead me to H.P. Lovecraft; I wanted nothing to do with the Cthulhu mythos.

 

[mmadsen]

The Hobbit - An absolute classic and wonderful book. My dad read it to me over successive nights as a bedtime story.

I get the feeling that every EN Worlder is going to do that. (Well, all the ones who successfully breed... )

 

[mmadsen]

Silverlock - I have read this. This past year. I thought it was complete and utter dreck. Seriously. The main character remains an absolute twit even after he's repeatedly been shown when he's been wrong.

But did you like it, CCamfield?

 

[Joshua Randall]

I was fascinated by Rateliff's description of a classic of fantasy of which I had never heard: William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.

Imagine that you were lucky enough to find true love, your destined soulmate who completed you. That you and your love were happy together as man and wife. That you lost your beloved to untimely death. Imagine that you had a vision of a future life, a reincarnation millions of year in the future, in a time when the sun had died and humankind was almost extinct. Imagine you lived on one of two great fortresses, besieged by the monsters that stalked the darkened Earth outside.


Then imagine that you discover that your beloved has been reborn into the other fortress, separated from your own by vast distances across a nightmare landscape haunted by evils that can devour the soul as well as the body. That the other fortress was being overrun and its people slaughtered, and your beloved in dire peril of not just death but annihilation, from which there would be no rebirth. Imagine that you ventured forth alone into the Night Land in an attempt to save her . . .

That description made me want to rush out and read this book. I was then saddened to learn that many editions of The Night Land are censored or abridged. I demand authenticity! Fortunately, the wonders of the World Wide Web are here to help me.

I found The Night Land available at this link and started reading it yesterday. The language is artificially archaic, but it's not much more difficult to attune to than Shakespeare, and considerably easier than Chaucer.

Hodgson could also turn a phrase - here are a couple of my favorites from the first two chapters.

(As the narrator's beloved wife lays dying)
And so we twain were together; and Love seemed that it had made a truce with Death in the air about us, that we be undisturbed; for there came a drowse of rest even upon my tense heart, that had known nothing but a dreadful pain through the weary hours.

And I whispered my love silently to My Beautiful One, and her eyes answered; and the strangely beautiful and terrible moments passed by into the hush of eternity.

That, to me, is quite moving.

(The narrator describes one part of the Night Land.)

To the East, as I stood there in the quietness of the Sleeping-Time on the One Thousandth Plateau, I heard a far, dreadful sound, down in the lightless East; and, presently, again--a strange, dreadful laughter, deep as a low thunder among the mountains. And because this sound came odd whiles from the Unknown Lands beyond the Valley of The Hounds, we had named that far and never-seen Place "The Country Whence Comes The Great Laughter." And though I had heard the sound, many and oft a time, yet did I never hear it without a most strange thrilling of my heart, and a sense of my littleness, and of the utter terror which had beset the last millions of the world.

Good stuff!

There's quite a bit about Hodgson himself on the web; one good site I found here.



As for Bellairs' Face in the Frost - I'm not sure why I thought it was out of print. Duh.

 

[mmadsen]

I had no idea this column existed, and I cannot praise it enough after reading only half the articles. It's the perfect thing to have on the site, and provides a grand introduction to the fantasy fiction that D&D is based on.

I agree 100 percent.

I hear more and more younger players just say 'no' when I ask 'have you ever read such-and-such?', so this kind of column I consider extremely important to the hobby.

I'm honestly shocked by the number of D&D players who've never read Tolkien. I can imagine finding the hobby before finding Tolkien, but I can't imagine not seeking out such an obvious inspiration. I also can't imagine not reading King Arthur, Robin Hood, Greek and Norse mythology, etc.